Re: git: detect file creator

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 15 2022, Sim Tov wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I run a book digitizing project and pay people certain rate per 10K
> characters for the text files they upload to a git repo. Till now I

It's nice to see that someone still believes in The Mythical Man- Month
:)

> was using following command to detect files authored by CertainEditor:
>
>     git log --use-mailmap --no-merges --author="CertainEditor"
> --name-only --pretty=format:""
>
> Then I would pipe this output in `wc -m` and get amount of characters
> authored by CertainEditor and pay him accordingly. Usually editors do
> not touch each other's files and everything worked well. However
> recently one editor spotted a typo in somebody else's file and
> corrected it. This behavior is actually good and I would like to
> encourage it. However, now the command above lists the corrected file
> also as his, and so he gets paid for all the characters in the file
> while he changed only one of them. This, obviously, is not good.
>
> 1. Do you have an idea how can I list all the files **created** (not
> authored / committed) by a user, so I can implement a fair characters
> counting?

If you want to adapt your current script perhaps --diff-filter helps,
but...

> 2. Maybe some commit hooks can be used that will check whether the
> Author of a new commit is different from the previous one and if true
> - override it to the previous Author?

..it seems you should fundamentally stop using it, and instead iterate
over the commits, and pay for a "diff". Then you'd get the original
change, as well as the change-on-top.

> 3. Those small changes by a non-creator may be left not paid for (as
> this action is not so intensive and may be reciprocal), but if you
> have a good idea how I can pay for the "diff" the non-creator provides
> - it would be nice!

Just wc -l on the changed files(s) before & after, and pay the abs()
difference.

> Do you think this "diff" should be deducted from the creator? And if
> yes - how?

You could walk it back with "git blame" I guess.

But you might want to consider the economic & social mis-incentives of
lifting money from your co-workers coffers by pointing out a mistake to
them...